Deuteronomy 1:38

Summary

Moses tells the people that Joshua son of Nun, who currently stands before Moses as an attendant, is the one who will enter the land in his place. Moses commands that Joshua be strengthened, because it is Joshua who will cause Israel to inherit it.

Key words

• ha-'omed ("who stands", H5975G) — qal participle with definite article, describing Joshua's ongoing role of standing before Moses; the participle marks a continuous state rather than a single completed action.
• hu ("he", H1931) — independent personal pronoun, repeated twice in the verse (before yavo and before yanchilennah), placed for emphasis: it isolates Joshua as the specific subject of both the entering and the inheriting.
• yavo ("he will go", H0935G) — qal imperfect, denoting a future or ongoing action of entering; the imperfect aspect leaves the action open rather than marking it as already completed.
• chazzeq ("encourage/strengthen", H2388G) — piel imperative, an intensive command form directed at Moses (or the implied addressee), instructing active reinforcement of Joshua.
• yanchilennah ("he will give it as an inheritance", H5157) — hiphil imperfect with a 3rd person feminine singular suffix ("her/it," referring to the land), a causative form: Joshua is not merely inheriting but causing Israel to inherit.

What the text says

The verse is built around two main clauses, each introduced by the independent pronoun hu ("he", H1931), which gives contrastive emphasis: it is specifically Joshua — not Moses — who will perform these two actions. The first clause, hu yavo shammah ("he will go there"), uses the qal imperfect yavo (H0935G) combined with the adverb shammah ("there", H8033G) formed from sham plus the directional he (H9011), pointing toward the land as a goal of motion.

The identification of Joshua is expressed through the construct phrase ben Nun ("son of Nun", H1121A + H5126) and the participial clause ha-'omed lefaneikha ("who stands before you", H5975G + H6440G), which uses the plural construct noun panim ("face/presence") with a 2nd person suffix to describe Joshua's position of service before Moses.

The second clause, introduced by the causal particle ki ("for/because", H3588A), gives the reason for the imperative chazzek ("encourage", H2388G): Joshua is the one who yanchilennah ("will cause it to be inherited", H5157), a hiphil form indicating that Joshua acts as the causative agent enabling Israel's possession of the land, rather than simply receiving it himself. The object marker 'et (H0853) before Yisra'el (H3478) marks Israel as the direct object of this causative giving.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders ha-'omed lefaneikha as "minister tuus" ("your minister/servant"), an interpretive expansion not present as a separate word in the Hebrew, which literally has only "who stands before you." The LXX uses παρεστηκώς σοι ("standing beside you"), closer to the Hebrew participle. The Vulgate also adds "pro te" ("in your place") after "intrabit," a clarifying phrase absent from the Hebrew text. For yanchilennah, the Vulgate reads "sorte terram dividet" ("he will divide the land by lot"), introducing the concept of "lot" and "land" not explicit in the Hebrew verb itself, while the LXX's κατακληρονομήσει preserves the inheritance-causing sense closer to the Hebrew hiphil.